Points of Order

Danielle Rowley Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Danielle Rowley (Midlothian) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Following the revelation by a former universal credit helpline employee that call handlers are instructed to use “deflection scripts” to hurry people off the phone when they have phoned up for help with universal credit, my office submitted a freedom of information request to the Department for Work and Pensions to ask to see the scripts. The response I received was that there are no scripts, but that there are “agent-led processes” and “supportive lines available”. The Department did not provide any detail of those lines, which was the clear intention of the FOI request. I do not think that the Department should be able to use semantics to avoid scrutiny. I have requested a review of the response and asked whether I could be provided with the relevant materials.

The code of practice on FOI rules states that requests should be acknowledged and replied to within 20 days. Even accounting for the Christmas break, that date has now passed and I have not received a response. The Government appear to be flouting the mechanisms set up to ensure that they are transparent and can be held to account by Parliament. Will you please advise me, Mr Speaker, on what I should do to receive this important information, to which I am entitled under freedom of information legislation, as the Government have not complied?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order and for her characteristic courtesy in giving me advance notice of her intention to raise it. I am sorry to disappoint her, but I am not sure that I can help her today. The reason is that responses to freedom of information requests by Government Departments are a matter for those Departments; the Chair has no locus in relation to the subject. It is perfectly open to the hon. Lady to continue to pursue the matter, but she does so under a regime that is informed by statute and in relation to which she will, I imagine, have rights, and quite possibly rights of appeal. As I am sure the hon. Lady will know, the issues fall within the purview of the Information Commissioner. However, whereas in relation to answers to parliamentary questions there is a direct parliamentary ownership and the Chair does have locus, in this case I do not. That said, the hon. Lady has made her point with force and alacrity, and it will have been heard on the Treasury Bench.